The Endtimes and Looking to the Future
New Recs and Upcoming Releases
Folks, I know I should be better at getting these notes out to the world, and that will be something I work on in the new year, if we survive the holidays and the transition to whatever is coming at us.
I had a huge weekend this past week, making my thirteenth sale on a new short story (looking at you, CHM!), and earning my purple belt in Shaolin Kempo via a nearly three hour test on Friday night (looking at you, Boulder Karate!). Keeping my fingers crossed that this weekend will have some good in it as well, and that Army beats Navy in their annual football matchup, the purest form of college football left in an era of the bottomless transfer portal and NIL money. These two teams are among the few that can use neither, and actually build programs through years of recruiting and training. And despite the challenges of the portal and NIL, Army is 11-1 heading into this game. BEAT NAVY!
All that aside, this is the stuff that fuels my work - my experience at West Point and an active duty Armor office from 2000-2005. Years spent in clean tech and grad school and then clean tech again. Building a home and raising a family. Losing parents and friends. All themes that you’ll find in my work, which I hope you enjoy.
Anyway, let’s get down to business and talk about the things I’ve read recently that I think you might love:
Recent Reads and Recommendations:
The Reformatory - by Tananarive Due. Where to begin with this one? It won several awards in 2024 and I should have read it sooner. This thing is a powerhouse; a relentless narrative thrust set in Jim Crow Florida. A young Black boy is sent to a local reform school after defending his sister from the advances of a son of the county’s most powerful business and land owning family. A reform school that is haunted by more than just the traumas inflicted upon the youth imprisoned there. Informed by Due’s own family history at just such a school, this book will grab you and hold you close to the bittersweet ending. Make sure to read the acknowledgements and Due’s notes, and check out the extensive bibliography to learn more about the true history of schools like this, buried in too shallow graves of our nation’s past.
Dungeon Crawler Carl - by Matt Dinniman. On the other end of the spectrum, we have what is one of my favorite things to have read in the past ten years, if not ever. This books kicks off a series of six books I burned though in less than a month earlier this year, and for which the seventh book recently released, and I tore through it in three days. Earth has been taken over by an intergalactic media and mining entity, and all living creatures that survive the initial collapse are invited to follow a staircase into the bowels of the earth to take part in a long running production of a near universally watched production called Dungeon Crawler World. This is a multi-level game where the only real rules are to survive and make it to the next deeper level. Full of biting wit and social commentary, this series is a multi-genre extravaganza with such well written characters, it doesn’t matter what ridiculous plot points these folks are forced to navigate. I’d watch Carl and his magical talking cat Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk do just about anything. Fun, propulsive, addictive, and scathing in its critique of the shallowness of contemporary society, dive in, but don’t expect to pull your head up until you are caught up on all seven books so far. Available on Kindle Unlimited of those of you who subscribe, and KU is worth it just for these books alone, at least for a month or two.
My latest and upcoming:
Hotel Macabre Vol 1 - Crystal Lake Publishing. This is the first published anthology where I have had a story, and the line-up is killer. Seriously check out the Table of Contents and tell me you don’t want this. My story (“A Message From the Past, A Message From the Future”) was inspired by a real life ghost town in the Hudson Valley called Doodletown, full of foundations and houses that just seem to have disappeared, surrounded by the woods overlooking the Hudson River, not very far from West Point. There is also a bit of an homage to my grandfather, Ray K Gensler, who worked on the Manhattan Project and whose certificate we see in the story from the US Corps of Engineers - Manhattan District, is a very real thing I hold dear in my own documents. Check it out.
“Devil’s Tooth” - Cosmic Horror Monthly Patreon. This one is my thirteenth short story sale of new fiction, and will be coming to Patreon subscribers of CHM sometime next year. An eco-horror story set in the dried up remains of the Great Salt Lake. This is a fun one I can’t wait for the world to read.
What I am reading:
Wake Up and Open Your Eyes by Clay McLeod Chapman. I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this one and as the author himself says when describing it: Hoooooo-boy. I’ll share more when I finish it, but it might be his best and most impactful work to date. Clay holds nothing back. He really does want you to WAKE UP. HE wants you to OPEN YOUR EYES.
Small Town Horror by Ronald Malfi. This is my first Malfi book, and at a bit past the halfway mark, I am impressed. Sitting somewhere on the line between I Know What You Did Last Summer and King’s IT, this is a bot of nostalgia horror set in the Chesapeake Bay region of Maryland. I am looking forward to the race to the end.
Blood and Ruins: The Last Imperial War, 1931-1945 by Richard Overy. A 1000 page tome by one of the world’s greatest World War 2 scholars, examining the root causes of WW2 through a different set of lenses than we might be used to. I am in early days with this one, but I am sure it will continue to challenge me about our own role as a nation in the build up to and prosecution of the war, and the world left behind after all was said and done.
What I’m Watching:
Cobra Kai, currently finishing season 3 (on Netflix). A sequel to the original Karate Kid films of the ‘80s, set in the present day 33 years later. This show is so much better than it sounds. Great character work, tension that never really lets go, and built in traditional 30 minute segments that are imminently watchable for hours on end. It doesn’t get old. Give it a chance and I bet you’ll be hooked as well.
Enough for now. Enjoy the holidays. Spend time with family or friends. Relax. Reflect. Read. As always, I appreciate your time. See you in 2025.
-JG